Sunday, April 20, 2014

And Now...For the Rest of the Tree Canopy...

Here are some photos culled from Flickr's extensive collection of "forest" pix:

Time for

This is where we ask you how many entries you think NPR will get for the
challenge above. If you want to win, leave a comment with your guess
for the range of entries NPR will receive. First come first served, so
read existing comments before you guess. Or skip the comments and send
an email with your pick to Magdalen (at) Crosswordman (dot) com. Ross
and I guess last, just before we publish the Thursday post. After the
Thursday post is up, the entries are closed. The winner gets a puzzle
book of our choosing or a contribution in the winner's honor to the Red Cross.

Someone watched The West Wing and House, M.D. NPR got around 680 correct entries. Zeke Creek won. (I assume you want a contribution to the Red Cross, Zeke?) This week seems easier, but who can say. Oh, wait, I know: YOU CAN. Pick a range!

Our tie-break rule: In the event
that a single round number is announced with a qualifier such as
"about" or "around" (e.g., "We received around 1,200 entries."), the
prize will be
awarded to the
entrant who picked the range including that precise
number, e.g., 551 - 600 wins if the announced range is "around 600." We
retain the discretion to award the prize to an entrant who picked the
adjacent range (e.g., 601-650) if that entrant had not
already won
a prize. In the event that
both entrants had won a
prize already or neither had,
then to the earlier of the
two entries on the
famous judicial principle of
"First Come First Serve,"
(or in technical legal jargon,
"You Snooze, You Lose").
As of January, 2014, this rule is officially even more complicated than
it's ever been, but at least it's consistent with what we actually do..

Ever since Will the Short propounded the idea that pine cones can be found on fir trees (7/17/2011) I have been reluctant to trust him, arboreally speaking.

The seed of that feeling was planted, so to speak, several years earlier when he claimed that conifers were kinds of firs, not vice versa, then dismissed those who corrected him as "purists" or somesuch.

I am still boggled by the immense number of possibilities in this challenge and probably won't take any more time to work on it.